On January 6th Lil Linden was informing people of server deploys for the week of January 3rd….Americans write dates funny, anyway whilst talking of Magnum (no not the PI) Lil pointed folk in the direction of Grid Survey to see what release channel their sim was on, be it Magnum, Le Tigre or Blue Steel.

The other day I was at an office hour where a question was asked about RC channels to which a Linden mused there was a website which informed people of what release channel a sim was on, a resident piped up that the website was …..Grid Survey! Yes Tyche Shepherd’s Grid Survey is an unofficial, official source of great data on the grid and the reason that Tyche’s site is considered one of such awesomeness is due to Tyche’s extremely ethical handling of data.

The data Tyche collects is informative, public, wonderfully interesting and presented in a manner that makes it a delight to read, indeed I’d go as far to say that Tyche presents the best public stats on Second Life anywhere!

The Redzone kerfuffle is in serious danger of masking other concerns regarding Second Life, griefing being one and I personally find some of the harassment of Redzone users to be particularly unpalatable, whether you agree with Redzone or not, there is nothing to be gained from harassing Redzone users. However one thing Linden Lab should consider is taking a look at Argent Stonecutter’s Jira proposal to give us better security via a master account, as explained on Jira-SVC-6212.

This proposal has quite a few big advantages, for a start it means it’s harder for people to guess your Second Life login name, it could be used to adult verify and give payment status to, all your associated accounts if you choose and it could also be used to ban or allow access to parcels or sims for this avatar only or all avatars associated with this account.

This would of course mean some substantial work for Linden Lab, but in terms of security and greater options it would enhance the Second Life experience.

Dale Innis describes the Redzone issue as silly, not just people’s concerns about Redzone, Dale is talking about Redzone itself being silly because it can’t possibly be accurate. Hamlet over at New World Notes suggests it’s not a big issue because so few of Second Life’s total population have voted on the Jira. They are both right to a degree but are both missing the bigger issues because this isn’t about IP logging or tracking, I get to see IP addresses of visitors here, it’s not what gets logged that’s the issue, it’s how it’s used.

Data is required to help improve services, but that data should really be limited when it’s going to be shared or used for marketing purposes, I used to work with a guy who would spell his name incorrectly during surveys so he could track who was selling on his details. People get miffed when their data is used for purposes other than they expected, anyone commenting on my blog, or Hamlet’s isn’t giving us permission to put them on mailing lists, publish their details or engage in a marketing campaign with them and although some sites will try to do this, there are privacy laws and directives to be aware of, the issue is really one of respect, and that’s where Redzone and its users fall down.

I saw a comment recently about point and click that said something along the lines of Second Life not being a Lucasarts adventure, quite, but you know what, I’d love there to be a LucasArts type adventure in Second Life, you know, like Monkey Island! Now of course, Monkey Island has been done and Ron Gilbert won’t tell anyone the secret but wouldn’t it be great if someone like Ron Gilbert felt there was a big enough market within Second Life for him to create a bit of a fun adventure for the platform? There are of course obvious issues such as scalability, physics, data storage yadda yadda yadda but I’m sure something could be done point and click style, the big barrier really is how does one make games pay in Second Life?

How about going even more basic than point and click and having a text adventure, Scott Adams style, I’m sure something like that could be scripted. Why are you talking about games Ciaran, I hear my alt saying, well it’s because Rod Humble has been penned in to be a keynote speaker at The Inventing The Future of Games Symposium on April 15th, according to Gamasutra.

This is not a love song, this is another post about Redzone, which is getting to quite flabbergasting proportions right now for the sheer breathtaking cheek of it all, just when you think it’s safe to go back into the ocean along comes Redzone 2. There are some who think Linden Lab are dangling enough rope for Zfire and the Redzone massive to hang themselves, I’m not quite so convinced but there is something extremely unsavoury going on.

There appeared to be some talks between Linden Lab and Redzone, Zfire appeared to be listening, he agreed to opt in for the hud, he agreed to seek consent via the hud, but the comments on the Redzone forum puts Linden Lab in the position where they’d like to know where Zfire got the notion to rock the boat.

The new community standards aren’t even dry from the printing press and the creator of the device that seeks to stop griefers, copybotters and does not at all have a primary function of detecting alts, is suggesting ways to circumvent the new community standards, you couldn’t make this up!

There has been an unannounced change to the community standards, which can be read here. The main point people have noticed so far is with regards to disclosure:

Disclosure

Residents are entitled to a reasonable level of privacy with regard to their Second Life experience. Sharing personal information about your fellow Residents without their consent — including gender, religion, age, marital status, race, sexual preference, alternate account names, and real-world location beyond what is provided by them in their Resident profile — is not allowed. Remotely monitoring conversations in Second Life, posting conversation logs, or sharing conversation logs without the participants’ consent are all prohibited.

Now before people start popping the champagne corks thinking this means the end of Redzone, think again, because without Linden Lab applying some common sense and moderation, things haven’t changed that much at all.

As some of you may know, inworld I’m an evil Drow Lord with minions working for me, plotting world domination and fighting the forces of goodness …well that’s not quite the story but don’t believe Tweets from people like Lady Sakai or Constanza Amsterdam who describe me as a sweety! I’m a Lord dammit! Anyway to this end, I’m very interested in the Inworld Fantasy Faire event, it’s also linked to good causes and of course, should be good fun and although it doesn’t start until April, I thought I’d post a heads up now. Although I’m not involved at all in organising this event, I do have notecards and information, so feel free to IM me for the info.

If you have a passion for something, you get a 50 dollar guitar at a pawn shop, whatever it takes.

Damian Carbenell

PASSIONATE:having, compelled by, or ruled by intense emotion or strong feeling; fervid: a passionate advocate of socialism. an outburst of strong emotion or feeling: expressing, showing, or marked by intense or strong feeling; emotional: passionate language.

Wikipedia

Passion, passionate – these words define Damian Carbenell, the man and his music.

Damian Carbenell is a young man who has beenpassionate about his song, his music, his life since before he can remember. At the ripe age of, well, forever, it was his uncle, who was in an 80’s hair band, who was fun, childish in nature, big into music, who introduced Damian to what has become his way of life.

Damian doesn’t remember a time when he wasn’t singing. He was beating on pots and pans by 5. When he was in the 1st grade he entered a school talent show. He was the youngest one there, and second to last to perform. With his grandfather playing guitar, Damian sang “Let there be peace on Earth“. He sang to a packed audience, but when he was finished there was not a sound made. At first he thought no one liked it, he couldn’t understand why everyone was so quiet. He didn’t understand that at the time we were at war (Desert Storm) and there were tears in the eyes of his audience. Damian had chosen THAT song because it was a song he sang in church. It was THAT night; he said he felt that the fates came together. THAT night was the night the fire was lit…..his passion….his direction.

By the 4th grade, in a red leather jacket with zippers all over, penny loafers, and black pants he sang his heart out to MJ’s “Beat It” choreographed with his 3 back up dancers…his music was evolving.Continue reading »

Whilst I still personally believe Redzone should be banned, for those who feel Redzone is an ethical tool, aimed solely at reducing the risk of grieifng and copybotting, I challenge them to do the ethical thing here and set aside a landing point that fully informs potential visitors and customers of their sims and stores of exactly what will happen with their data once they enter a Redzone enabled parcel.

One of the arguments set forth by Redzone users has been that those who oppose the system are copybotters, or people who want to grief, suggesting therefore that honest to goodness people will have no problem whatsoever with sharing the data that Redzone thrives upon. Therefore let’s put this to the test, inform people that the system will scan them, try to match them to alts, that the information can be retrieved by other Redzone users and that their alts can be revealed, if Redzone users are correct, the vast majority of people won’t mind at all, they’d also be seeking consent for use of the system, ticking an ethical usage box.

As Second Life evolves, new issues will arise and the recent rumpus about Redzone is one of those issues. The point with Redzone is that it scans you,without consent, without informing you that you are going to be scanned, there is no mention of what Redzone does with your data, there is no privacy policy with this device and that’s where we get into a bit of a sticky wicket.

Linden Lab so far have taken no action and to be fair to Linden Lab, how do they incorporate a policy to ban Redzone without making legitimate uses of IP addresses illegal too? Linden Lab move slowly on issues, very slowly, they could of course decide to just ban Redzone as they have in the past banned traffic gaming devices, but without a clear policy, enforcement becomes tricky when the next Redzone arrives. The starting point for Linden Lab’s policy of course lies with the terms of service.